What Goes Unsaid: A Memoir of Fathers Who Never Were

"...An imagined life, with Faulkner's tragic sensibility and Beckett's relentless grief."-- Ricardo Baixeras, El Periodico

From one of Mexico's leading writers--a memoir about three men who are driven to escape the confines of their traditional lives and roles.

In 1958, Carlos Monge McKey sneaks out of his home in the middle of the night to fake his own death. He does not return for four years.

A decade later, his son, Carlos Monge Sánchez, deserts his family too, joining a guerrilla army of Mexican revolutionaries.

Their stories are unspooled by grandson and son Emiliano, a writer, who also chooses to escape reality, by creating fictions to run away from the truth.

What Goes Unsaid is an extraordinary memoir that delves into the fractured relationships between fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons; that disinters the ugly notions of masculinity and machismo that all men carry with them -- especially in a patriarchal culture like Mexico. It is the story of three men, who -- each in his own way -- flee their homes and families in an attempt to free themselves.

Praise for Among the Lost

"Among the Lost is masterly. Its rhythm and syntax form an unforgettable, multilayered requiem for our battered region."
--Valeria Luiselli

"The relentless pace and vivid language... brings home the physical and emotional anxiety of those who have risked everything in the faint hope of a better life across the border... Monge shows how the corruption of the soul afflicts young and old alike when the powerful prey on the vulnerable, yet he also creates nuanced villains grappling with self-doubt and fear. In a remarkable literary feat, this tale of the dire events of one day illuminates the past, the present, and the future. While many questions remain unanswered at the end, this is a comprehensive drama of the human potential for violence and dreams in a fractured land." STARRED REVIEW
--Shoba Viswanathan, Booklist

"This is a book of unbearable beauty and affliction. It is written with the lucidity of someone who has opened his eyes and refused to shut them again. The book's power is not only in what it says, but in the silences that it leaves the reader's conscience to grapple with.">
--Yuri Herrera

"The language in Among the Lost is both striking and strikingly easy to read...He channels the full spectrum of written expression, and the result hits the trifecta: beautiful, fast-paced, and completely his own." >
--Lily Meyer, NPR

"[A] timely novel of immigration that is as beautiful as it is horrific. It is a multilayered, emotionally complex artistic triumph." STARRED REVIEW>
--Foreword Reviews

Emiliano Monge is a critically acclaimed, award-winning Mexican author. He was selected as one of the most significant Latin American writers by the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2009, and in 2015 was chosen by Conaculta, the Hay Festival, and the British Council as one of twenty essential Mexican writers. In 2018, he was included on a list of the most important Latin American writers under thirty-nine by the Hay Festival. He is a regular columnist for the newspaper El País and has written for many other magazines and publications. He is also a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores Artísticos (National Scheme of Artistic Creators) in Mexico.

Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator, writer, and editor. He has translated numerous French and Hispanic authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas, and Virginie Despentes. Over a career spanning more than twenty years, his work has earned him the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and he was twice awarded both the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo won the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize. He has edited two major anthologies, Found in Translation: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Translated (2018) and QUEER: LGBT Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday (2021).